[kepler-dev] Actor documentation

[Laura L. Downey]

I think there are pros and cons to both approaches.

You've listed some pros.

Some of the cons are incorrect information, loss of control, mishmash of
stuff, people putting in preferences and ideas rather than noting something
specifically about the actor etc.

Hybrid idea might be to let anyone add "comments or notes" to the bottom of
the documentation but not change the main body of description, inputs,
outputs etc. unless they have admin authority or are the owners etc.

Laura L. Downey
Senior Usability Engineer
LTER Network Office
Department of Biology, MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM  87131-0001
505.277.3157 phone
505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu
 

-----Original Message-----
From: cxh at EECS.Berkeley.EDU [mailto:cxh at EECS.Berkeley.EDU] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:05 PM
To: Laura L. Downey
Cc: ptresearch at chess.eecs.berkeley.edu; 'Kepler-Dev'
Subject: Re: [kepler-dev] Actor documentation 

Here's a half baked idea.

I think it would be nice if users could update and comment on
documentation.

I was thinking it would be cool to have some sort of wiki for actor
documentation, or at least something so that users could annotate
actor documentation.  The PhP website uses this to great advantage,
see
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.eregi.php 

The beauty is that users tend to make note of things that weren't
clear or "aha!" moments that they had.  Yah, the comments don't
make great reading, but I've found them really useful for PhP, where
I'm by no means an expert and often flailing around for a quick 
solution.

_Christopher

--------

    
    At 10:58 AM 12/19/2005 -0700, Laura L. Downey wrote:
    >I'm a little confused here.  Why would the user want to edit the
    >documentation?  Or is this "edit" feature supposed to be for creators
of
    the
    >documentation?
    
    Yes, or to modify the documentation for an instance of the actor,
    or to add documentation for a composite actor.  Can you think of a
better
    phrase than "Edit Documentation"?
    
    Edward
    
    [LLD>] 
    Oh I'm not opposed to the phrase "Edit Documentation," I was just
thinking
    that many of the Kepler users would not ever edit the documentation,
that i
   s
    sort of like an advanced feature -- maybe only creators of new actors
(the
    owners) would have the permission to edit the associated documentation.
I
    would also expect that we wouldn't want the documentation edited on the
bas
   e
    set of actors that ships with Kepler.  But maybe my assumptions are
wrong..
   .
    I can't see any issue though with Ptolemy putting in "Edit
Documentation" a
   s
    a menu item.  Kepler can certainly hide or reveal the menu item as
    appropriate, I would assume.  (un oh more assumptions ) :-)
     
    Laura
    
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--------